Politicians should make economic growth a priority since only that will really improve the jobs outlook.

As 2012 draws to a close, my thoughts turn to Queen Elizabeth. Or, more precisely, the speech she famously delivered 10 years ago in which she summed up the year her nation had endured.

It was not, Her Majesty said, “a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure.” Indeed, she despaired, “it has turned out to be an ‘Annus Horribilis.'” And, she ventured, “I suspect that I am not alone in thinking it so.”

I don't know whether the majority of Americans would go so far as to describe 2012 as a “year of horrors.” But there certainly was much this year that troubled, both at home and abroad.

That includes the bitter, divisive presidential campaign, which has been followed by bitter, divisive post-election negotiations on the so-called fiscal cliff.

There was also the terror attack upon the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, which resulted in the deaths of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans (about which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will finally testify to Congress next month).

The Supreme Court upheld nearly all of President Barack Obama's health care reform in a narrow 5-4 decision reflecting the deep division Mr. Obama's most noteworthy presidential achievement fomented among the American populace.

Then there were the shooting sprees that claimed the lives of 14 victims at an Aurora, Colo., movie theater, and, most recently, 26 victims at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school, including 20 children.

All of those news-making events resonated with the American people, as well as others unmentioned here that commanded headlines during the course of the year

But none ranked nearly as important in the minds of the hoi polloi as the nation's economy, which, in the estimation of most, failed in 2012 to produce the robust growth and resultant job creation for which Americans of all strata had hoped.

Yes, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported last week that the nation's real gross domestic product increased by an annualized rate of 3.1 percent in the third quarter, after increasing an anemic 1.3 percent in the second quarter.

While the third-quarter uptick in GDP is most welcome, economic growth for all of 2012 is projected at little better than 2 percent, a rate that is insufficient, most economists say, to return the nation's jobless rate to 5 percent, which is where it was before the Great Recession gripped the economy in December 2007.

In fact, in a survey this fall by USA Today, the median estimate of some 48 economists is that the nation's economy will grow in 2013 by only 2.3 percent. They expect the unemployment rate to end next year at 7.6 percent, a mere one-tenth of a point below where it is today.

The 7.7 jobless rate reported this month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, celebrated as a four-year low, not only is nowhere near the pre-recessionary 5 percent rate, it grossly understates the breadth and depth of joblessness throughout the land.

That's because the 7.7 percent figure doesn't include all of those who desire full-time permanent work but can't find it, much like the nearly 1 million discouraged workers who have given up looking for a job, the more than 2.5 million temporary and contract workers and the more than 8 million part-time workers.

All told, there are 22.7 million Americans unemployed, underemployed or marginally attached to the workforce. This “labor underutilization,” as the federal government terms it, amounts to 14.4 percent of the nation's workforce, nearly double the official unemployment rate.

And the mass of underutilized workers aren't likely to become utilized anytime soon.

That's because, in 2012, job growth averaged a mere 151,000 a month ( actually down from 153,000 a month in 2011). If the U.S. economy maintains that pace in 2013, it will amount to 1.8 million new jobs. That's 20.9 million jobs fewer than necessary to employ all those looking for full-time permanent work.

What frightens is that corporate layoffs continued apace in 2012, even though the so-called Great Recession was declared officially over in June 2009 by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a firm that tracks layoffs, reported this month that job cuts increased in November for a third straight month as employers announced plans to shed 57,081 workers.

That brought total jobs cuts for the first 11 months of the year to 490,806. The Challenger firm's executive vice president, Rick Cobb, noted that the job losses were being driven by “large-scale” cuts.

That included the 18,500 jobs eliminated last month by Hostess Brands in a decidedly nasty labor dispute that hopefully is not a harbinger of things to come in 2013. Also the 11,000 layoffs announced by American Airlines in February, and the 27,000 announced by Hewlett-Packard in May.

And there are no signs that the corporate bloodletting will abate over the next 12 months. In fact, a few weeks before Christmas, Citibank announced that 11,000 of its employees should expect pink slips in the near future. Ho. Ho. Ho.

Against this disquieting backdrop, is it any wonder that, in a Gallup poll released just before Christmas, three-quarters of Americans say it is “a bad time to find a quality job”?

Similarly, more than three-quarters of Americans believe that the U.S. economy is “still in a recession,” according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll this month.

The hope here is that lawmakers in the nation's capital will have a moment of clarity before they adjourn for 2012; that they will set aside partisanship long enough to reach an agreement on the fiscal cliff so that the issue does not spill over into the new year.

The American people want President Obama and the next Congress, which will boast 80 new members, enough to change the atmospherics on Capital Hill, to concentrate their attention in 2013 on growing the nation's economy, which will, in turn, stimulate the job growth the nation's idled workers so desperately need.

For if the economy performs over the next 12 months as it has this year, 2013 will not be a year upon which most Americans will look back with undiluted pleasure.

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